The Storage Necessity Myth: How To Choreograph High-renewables Electricity Systems

This video was re-recorded by RMI to serve the energy community until its original version, delivered in the TED All-Stars session in Vancouver on 18 March 2014, is posted at ted.com. Copyright (c) 2014 Rocky Mountain Institute. Spreading this video for noncommercial use is permitted and encouraged.

It’s frequently said that variable wind and solar power endanger reliable electricity supply; and so we need either “baseload” fossil fuel-burning power plants, or breakthroughs in bulk storage. That’s a myth. Amory Lovins explains why.

24 Responses to "The Storage Necessity Myth: How To Choreograph High-renewables Electricity Systems"

I like this video very much, however it’s properly too technical for people
that aren’t already energy wonks. 😉

I think what’s important to communicate is that in the past we’ve build
baseload power plants to optimize the cost of the electricity system. Big
capital intensive coal or nuclear power stations that run 24/7 promised
energy (not power) at a lower cost than existing power plants, so
governments & the energy industry build those. (usually heavily subsidized)

Today advanced solar & wind are able to provide that cost optimizing role
in the electricity system. Huge amounts of energy at low & stable costs –
very predictable on a anual or monthly basis, but not a dispatchable power
plant.﻿

We don’t need a storage break through we are going to use electric cars
where are these cars? How will they get charged up if they are discharging
at night? How will you get to work with a car drained of power? What
happens if the wind stops & it’s cloudy for a few days? RE needs storage to
make it reliable, it is expensive too so we need to have a realistic plan
today, before it becomes vital and we find out we should have gone nuclear
in the first place.﻿

I feel there are are two challenges for implementing this model, at least
in developing countries
1. Updating appliances to considered efficiency levels in the video
2. Wind Energy and Solar predictions are before day based, won’t it hamper
planning,: given seasonal changes now a days?

I feel, addressing other similar concerns… this video is one stop
solution for all problems related to energy.﻿

As Amory states, cold water and ice storage for daytime air conditioning
needs by running the systems at night when demand is low, and power is
cheap, will have a huge effect on shaving the peaks off the summertime
loads which will reduce the need for more power plants. I can see this
technology expanding to residential use not just commercial.﻿

armory begins by discussing electricity production ‘costs’ dropping . this
is funny because ‘costs’ might be plummeting but actual prices are rising
quite a bit . this is called stagflation. costs might be going down because
consumption is dropping and at the same time there is an excess of zero
interest rate and cheap venture funding for projects that would otherwise
not get built.

if storage necessity is a myth, how is it that so much money is going into
storage. how is it, that electric cars can exist without storage (
transportation fuel accounting for a full 25% of net energy used)

what does myth mean? what are you benchmarks? i’ve been reading armory
lovins for a long long time, over 10 years.

he says it’s a myth “to keep the lights on” . yea, lights. he’s using that
term in the generic sense to persuade his audience. but the truth is that
you should take him at his literal word. you don’t need batteries to keep
the lights on, because it depends on when the lights are on. and yes, you
can stagger the production of fossil fuel and hydro-power electricity
production at night. ‘dispatcheable’ renewables.

he mentions biogas. biogas is a huge joke. and this is why realists don’t
take armoy too seriously, such as when he suggested that cars should be
1000 pounds due to lightweight materials.

lovins SYSTEMICALLY AND PERSISTENTLY discusses the distant future at least
30 years out , instead of discussing the present. he uses the term
“choreographed” as a method of brainwashing his audience to believe that
mere simulations of the future are sufficient to convince the public to
spend trillions of dollars of their money, through keynsian borrowing, to
finance their own ‘green future’.

this is how countries go broke. this is how germany is going broke.

there are some very real REALISTS discussing the future of battery
chemistry and the future of scaling solar power. to produce terrawatts not
gigawatts for many billions of investment dollars. guys such as bill gross
from idealab. people who have actual experience in VChttps://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gross_on_new_energy

bill gross isn’t bullshitting you about the future and ‘myths’. he readily
admits our current industrial solar power paradigm IS NOT SCALING. you
cannot build a few giggawatts and claim this is going to change the world
in 30 years when there are 2300 gigawatts of total production capacity ,
less than 2% of which is solar and wind.

there are a lot of tricks and false statistics used in lovins speech. but
people lap it up because he is perceived as a green energy ‘saint’. with
lots of backing. i don’t buy it. he really hasn’t contributed much other
than pipe dreams. faith based energy economics is nice and , like any
religion, it can succesfully be used to solicit donations. however, the
MONEY MUST BE SPENT WELL.

guys like armory don’t and should not be given the responsibility as to how
to spend it. buys like bill gross should. they are realists. ﻿

“Whatever exists is possible.” Yet he fails to share just how often
European windy and sunny countries are importing cheap electricity from
nuclear-France, and how the French export more electricity than any other
nation on earth! France is Europe’s ‘backup’. Whatever exists sure is
possible! France shows us the way when they decarbonised without any funny
numbers or outright lies. France decarbonised in about 11 years, going from
8% nuclear power to 80% (73% increase in 11 years) and the rest is hydro.
Wind and solar can have their place, but nuclear must be the backbone of
maybe half the grid!﻿

the graph first assumes that a huge decrease in demand will occur due to
efficiency. Maybe it could occur in industrialized countries. But how about
developing countries? Its very easy to get a huge decrease in use if the
previous generation was dominated by power hogs like in industrialized
countries. But in a lot of developing countries the previous generation had
zero electricity use like burning dung or wood for fuel and the next
generation is now middle class and wants airconditioning and a car. Factor
in population growth and I seriously doubt such a large decrease in
electricity demand is possible in developing countries﻿

it looks like its expensive. You need to build a lot of stuff aside from
wind and solar plants

*Decrease electricity demand by efficient use.
*Build dispatchable renewables like geothermal and biogas and mini hydro
and solar thermal electric.
*Changing the normal airconditioning of houses and businesses to ice
storage air conditioning.
*Widespread use of electric vehicle batteries as energy storage

all of those add ons add to the cost. Any research done that compares the
cost of all of the above versus just using a renewables + some nuclear? The
IPCC says the latter is cheaper

The PDF of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report says “in the absence or under
limited availability of mitigation technologies (such as bioenergy, CCS,
and their combination BECCS, nuclear, wind and solar), mitigation costs can
increase substantially depending on the technology considered. (Table 3.2)”.

One of the great problems with charging a whole fleet of electric cars is
how would the grid cope. Would we have to double our daytime capacity and
build out a super-grid as electricity demand skyrocketed! But NREL to the
rescue: the National Renewable Energy Laboratory assures us that if we just
charged all our cars at *night* on all that *spare capacity*, we could
charge 85% of American driving without building a new power plant or
upgrading the grid at all!http://climatecrocks.com/2010/02/08/plug-in-hybrids-renewable-energy-solution-of-the-month/

But hang on. This is the same NREL that published statistics and models
that Amory Lovins likes. You know, that guy that says we don’t *need*
baseload power. He loves those hypothetical models. Not only do they assume
*ridiculous* levels of energy efficiency (and I’m all for energy
efficiency, but within reason!), they also commit the crime of trying to
dodge the ‘baseload bullet’ by claiming we DON’T need baseload energy
because not that much happens at night. We don’t really want industry and
power and internet servers and airconditioning at night. Not even as the
climate warms. We don’t really want our ipads and iphones and idevices all
charging, the latest device with the trendiest apps, all requiring more and
more baseload internet servers like running a fridge for each ipad. They
don’t matter. Amory Lovins has got a model to push! Too bad about
airconditioning and iphones and…. electric cars. Honestly: these guys are
meant to be the renewable experts. Does the left hand even know what the
right hand is saying over there?﻿

The rocky mountain institute is a renewable lobby group. Not an unbiased
source. That explains why most of this video is so pro renewable, and shows
very bias stats. Solar in Northern Europe averages 5w per sqM Wind 2.5 W
per sq metre. Both are very intermittent. Solar output is inverse to need.
Storage is also very land intensive. The french have it correct. Today
they are running on no fossil fuels and have the cheapest , and most
reliable energy in Europe. They supply UK, Germany, Spain Swiss,Italy
belguim and Germany, with spare reserve too. They do it with nuclear, and
Hydro ( from the Alps) . Germany and denmark have spent time on
renewables.( solar, and wind) They thus have the highest cost for domestic
electricity in Europe( nearly the world) , but rely on fossil fuels because
solar and wind are unreliable at this part of the globe. Stick solar in the
desert, where there is space, and much more reliable sun. ( Like they do in
Hawaii). Not appropriate for N Europe.﻿

Amory Lovins clearly explains why we need not wait for advancements in long
term energy storage to shut down our aging, dangerous dirty fleet of
commercial nuclear power plants – we can choreograph our clean, green
sustainable energy production. We can turn away from nukes, coal, fracking
and Lovins tells us how﻿

This is the first time I’ve heard of the “storage myth” strawman.
Who raised this question?
Some american hobo?
This video is an answer to a shizzo hobo’s objection to “renewables”.
I always thought that solar was ridiculous because it takes more
non-renewable materials and energy to produce the solar unit – than it can
produce during its lifetime.

I never would have made the leap to “storage necessity” , since it’s not…
necessary.﻿

The biggest mistake in the assumption here is the manner they have scaled
up the variations of sun and the wind for 25GW and 37GW. This is wrong,
when we scale up solar and wind the variations in the output may be even
large because of seasonal changes across the entire continent. *This
assumption should be validated properly.*
*Assumes no resonance* effects in the grid, which will occur when multiple
smaller units producing varying output, like wind. They need large
expensive capacitor banks and sometimes electricity produced will have to
be curtailed to prevent overloading of the grid.
*Where is the materials economy?* Trashing WORKING low efficient appliances
to replace high efficient products? Does not sound good ecologically.
20-25GW from efficiency? Easy on papers, tough in practice.
Most of the assumptions should be reviewed again, because when scaling up
things will not vary in a linear manner.
These words are sweet to hear, but the reality(truth) is difficult to
digest!
TRUTH: *Renewables will just save fuel, will not eradicate fossil burning*﻿

“We all know that the wind doesn’t blow consistently and the sun doesn’t
shine every day,” he said, “but the nuclear industry would have you believe
that humankind is smart enough to develop techniques to store nuclear waste
for a quarter of a million years, but at the same time humankind is so dumb
we can’t figure out a way to store solar electricity overnight. To me that
doesn’t make sense.” Elon Musk﻿

How is it a myth when you are in fact confirming that we need storage in
this very video?!
It is also not true that those European countries does not use storage,
that is exactly what they’ve done to reach those numbers. And, none of them
are 100% renewable. Reaching 100% on random occasions when conditions are
perfectly met is hugely different from being able to run the country 100%
on renewables at all times.﻿